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Monday, June 13, 2011

Etape Caledonia Preamble

So sometime last summer my good tri-buddy Jules had this great idea that we have an outing on the only closed road cycle Sportive in the UK mainland... Namely Etape Caledonia... So with little training in recent months and hopeful that indeed my late season ironman would have left me with a little endurance still I set off last Friday 13th on another little 'road trip'. This time to the land of my grandparents on my Mothers side, Scotland... Edinburgh, Stirling and then to their homeland itself Perthshire.

The journey started off with a flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh, I did look at doing the Eco right thing and catching the train but frankly the phaffery involved with booking a bike on to three different (at least) train operators and getting these bookings to coincide with the the ticket purchase was well, just completely pathetically involved .... Which I'm sure would be a good topic for a full on 'why is this so hard in the modern era' type of rant on another day.... Anyway.. So I started my journey with a journey to LHR, a flight on friday the 13th no less (clearly no room for superstition) and got picked up by Jules at Edinburgh... who had announced that open water swimming was due to start that very day so we'd take a dip once the bike was unpacked. I think his perverse idea was to use this as some sort of acclimatisation ritual or something. We headed to the Loch for the session leader to announce it was fairly cold temperature (so that would not be the 18 degrees I had enjoyed the day before at home then), and so we were limited to a 10min swim on health and safety grounds!!...humm...

Having not had the weight allowance to squeeze in my wetsuit to either my hand luggage or bike box, I found myself squeezing in to Jules old one, that would be the one with a couple of little holes on both armpits then. Nice. I tiptoed across the pebble beach (note Jules sauntered over in his beach shoes, not that I was jealous... Much) and dipped my feet in... Frankly the stones and rocks were that uncomfortable I didn't feel the intense cold and was actually rather hoping that the cold would numb my feet sooner rather then later.... Having staggered a whole two paces I decided that a better way in was just to get on all fours (safer as less chance of slippage and also a way of acclimatising my hands to the ice bath like temperature of the water) ... So with not a lot of grace I must confess, I plundered in on all fours and took a wave right up the nose and gasped as I really did feel the cold blast of water seep into those holes in the armpits....

Looks pretty.... Pretty darn cold that's what...

Buoys had been put out about 50-100m apart and after a slight splash of something akin to breast stroke in the fashion of a black labrador I decided to put my head in and have done with it and get on with some crawl.

Thankfully the waters were crystal clear and actually rather tasty (I managed to inhale some off a breaker) .... Having competed several laps I decided as I was beginning to feel comfortable that clearly I suitably acclimatised to the cold of our northern lands.... Getting out though was slightly problematic... Having tried to stand on my feet and realising I couldn't feel them, which was good because the stones no longer hurt, but bad because I lost my balance... The best thing to do was beach myself... In true black wetsuit, queen seal fashion.... I landed on my tum, turned onto my bum, flipped back round on to all fours and staggered rather ungracefully out.... I was just beginning to gingerly attain vertical and make my way up the pebble beach to my much required woolly hat and warming towel when Jules shouted nicely at me if I could possible throw him his shoes (so he didn't have to hurt his delicate feet on the sharpe pebbles, he is an ironman in training I guess and I am not...).... Now despite my parents bringing me up to be a thoughtful kind person I did have two rather mean thoughts... First I thought "ha I'll put them on" and the second was "or I could throw them at him but just out of reach so they fall in the water" .... But I did neither... No.. I gingerly fought my way across the shingle to them and threw them in to his welcome hands. A mark of true friendship I think you'll find (Jules feel free to agree at this point)

We got home to the welcome warmth at Fionna's pad who kindly laid on some lush pasta and sausages ... Just what was needed... That and a glass of wine.

Saturday was a day for me to test how well I had put my bike together and Jules to take his sparkling not so new but somewhat unused TT bike out for a spin...... It turned out that Jules' and his bike flew, whilst I grunted and groaned and not able to stay in his draft... then with the slipping of the seat to a really rather too steep a downward angle at least I had found a good excuse for not just being dropped in the space of 2 metres but completly blown and spat out with clear disdain. With some cooing from me about how good Jules was looking and some tinkering with my seat clamps I took a well earned rest (we had been going all of about 20mins) before heading back - somewhat relieved we had a tail wind I managed to stay with Jules a bit longer as we hit a top speed of 25mph on the flat (it was a very big tail wind!)... with that done I was already feeling my legs from my earlier in the week training run for the event and was beginning to feel a little bit (more) worried of the prospect of 81miles the next day in what was forecast to be changeable and blustery conditions.

Still.... got back, found my bike measurements (would have been more useful in the morning when I had rebuilt my bike), tinkered some more with the saddle height and stuff and we packed the bikes into the car (a borrowed/rented car which is too long a story to go into!)... and set off ...

Jules ready at the wheel with the stead's in the back!

... and despite it being a one and a half hour drive in a straight direction we managed to go the wrong way at Perth and take a bit longer.... whilst waiting at a roundabout I did however manage to snap a picture of the local wild life;

Not sure exactly where the hotel was we parked at the event parking (clearly signposted as you got into the race HQ town of Pitlochry) and wandered back up for packet pick up. There was a hive of activity and we bumped into some friends of Jules and managed to somehow not hook up with some friends of ours we had met on a tri camp some years ago (well other then me seeing Susan in a car and diving over for a quick "hi" and hug!)...

We found our hotel with ease which was situated just off the high street and even managed to bag a parking spot in their car park (which had about 8 car parking spaces)!... all that was to be done was eat and get a good nights sleep.

.... sleep we did, early we woke, breakfast we ate (a little late and not the prescribed 3 hours before race start), dress in as many layers as I had with me I did (no thanks to Jules omitting to tell me he was still wearing thermals in May on the bike!), stumble out the door with bikes we went... right on to the start line more or less (excellent positioning of the hotel) to see the first wave start!